Don't Tell Him Pike!

As a fifteen year old, the sport of course fishing arrived unannounced in my life and I never really understood quite why. It's not as if I came from a family of fishermen, inheriting grandad's legendary basket and rods or some well polished trophies. I didn't, I just took up the sport after picking up a copy of the Angling Times in the newsagents where I did my paper round. Ten bob a week for delivering a back-breaking bag of Sunday papers, supplements and all.

It had a front page article about a bloke with a huge grin on his face holding up a record breaking pike. It was nearly as big as him, with vicious looking teeth and a sinister aura and I thought, wow! It was macho and fearsome and Ernest Hemingway and there I was, simmering with newly acquired testosterone, so it just became completely unavoidable. Outwitting fearsome river monsters it had to be.

With my hard earned savings and a lot of mum harassment, I soon possessed a rod and the basic essentials required to begin the hunt. The battle of wits between man..... well I was working on it.... and the beast from the depths. It didn't immediately occur to me that I had no idea where these monsters lived, nor how I would ever get there once I'd found out, so I headed for the town library and took out a copy of 'Outwitting the Big Buggers' by Sly Hunter. Well OK, but it was a long time ago and I can't remember what it was really called. I devoured its content though, its every drop of information and advice and I planned my safari with Rommel like thoroughness. Hatfield Brick Ponds it would be, at the crack of dawn next Saturday morning. The monsters should start counting their final days; I was ready!

I borrowed dad's alarm clock and set it for 4am, a time of day I had only ever read about. The flask was ready for filling, sandwiches made and my battle scarred Raleigh Riviera oiled and de slow-punctured, ready for action. Nothing could stop me now, the Angling Times front page was all mine. I went to bed in the knowledge that new records were about to be set in the outwitting of fearsome predators.

I slept fitfully, waking too frequently and staring at the luminous taunter, ticking at me in the darkness. Five minutes before the appointed hour and already awake, I leapt out of bed, deprived the alarm of its sole purpose in life and ventured out into the dark; the distinctly unfamiliar world of 4am. Down in the kitchen, our overweight mongrel, Jack, glared at me from his basket, clearly wondering what lunacy I was involved in at this hour. Quickly assessing there was nothing in it for him, he closed his eyes and returned to the arms of Morpheus. 

It was raining and definitely chillier than I had expected for September, as I unlocked the garden shed and began the process of loading the Raleigh with my kit. With military precision the holdall containing rod, landing net and assorted rests was strapped to the cross bar and my wicker fishing basket strapped to the pannier over the rear wheel with one of those stretchy things with a hook on each end. This contained reel, spare line, floats, hooks, lures, bait and the essential flask and sandwiches. By 4.20am the show was on the road.

I felt like one of those Chinese guys I'd seen on travelogues on TV, with seven hundredweight of stuff and three children balanced casually on the handlebars as he sallied across Shanghai. I cycled to school every day, but not with all this gear and not usually in the rain and the dark and wearing a cycling cape and a Doncaster Rovers wooly hat. The seven mile journey to Hatfield brick ponds became more challenging by the peddled yard, as rain poured from the cape onto my exposed trousers and socks and occasional traffic threatened to terminate my entire precarious venture. I stopped a number of times to readjust, wring out and question my sanity, but eventually, just as daylight dawned at about 6am, I arrived at my destination, damp and squelchy, but determined.

I had decided that the best chance I had of catching one of these giant killing machines was to use a lure, a brightly coloured articulated fishy lookalike with a hook, which I would cast out into the deep and slowly reel back in a manner so tempting that the monster pike patrolling these waters would find irresistible as it passed bewitchingly in front of their fearsome snouts. As I set up camp in what I considered an ideal spot, the rain stopped, full daylight switched on and so did my enthusiasm. Rod assembled, reel fitted and line threaded, I attached the bright orange lure and moved to the water's edge for my maiden cast. In one elegant twisting motion, holding rod and dangling lure vertically behind me, I swung forward and released the line so that the lure would hurtle upwards and outwards towards the deep. To my dismay, it hurtled upwards and outwards straight into the upper branches of a handsome silver birch overhanging the pond to my right and currently acting as my bike shed. I stood dumfounded, gaping at my stupidity as it dangled from its lofty perch. 

As hard as I tried, nothing proved successful in releasing my lure and line. Tugging, yanking, jerking, shaking, cursing; all proved futile. I even considered climbing the tree, but already having a three inch scar from an earlier illicit apple tree adventure, decided against it. A passing fellow big game hunter arrived beside me, looked up at my folly and grinned. 'You'll not get that out o' there lad,' he said, sagely. And we agreed he was right. 

I sat on my basket, dripping with anticlimax and ate my sandwiches, even though it was only quarter past seven, staring across the pond for inspiration. I could fish for less challenging pond dwellers, but it was the fearsome pike that had caught my imagination. Live baiting wasn't allowed here and I had read that pike were unlikely to take bread or worm or maggot. As I pondered, my new found sagely advisor began setting up his pitch some yards away and inspiration arrived. I wandered over, chatted casually and persuaded him to lend me a lure, on the basis that if that ended up next to my own, he'd want paying for it. Game on!

It's difficult to describe the enthusiasm with which I began my first foray into man eater outwitting. Mindful of every tree within casting distance, I began my trawl of the brick ponds' murkiest depths, hurling the newly borrowed lure as far as possible into the unknown and reeling back in with barely controllable expectation. I cast out and reeled in and cast out and reeled in and all the while, morning nudged ever closer towards afternoon and the pike gazed on with scornful indifference. 

I moved along the bank to new water and cunningly altered my reeling in tempo, from modestly paced allure to shamelessly shimmying seduction; but still nothing. By lunch time, the fuel gauge on my enthusiasm tank read just above empty and as I slumped dejectedly onto my basket, the heavens opened and my side of the divide quickly became as waterlogged as the pike's. I took what refuge my cycling cape allowed and poured myself a luke-warm coffee, watching dejectedly as the deluge topped it up.

The torrent was relentless as I looked out enviously across the pond at my more prosperous fellow hunters sitting smugly under their monster umbrellas and elaborate awnings, enjoying their cheese and pickle butties in the dry. As I stood to put my empty flask back into the basket, my feet suddenly went from under me in the muddy mire beneath and I slid unceremoniously down the short gradient, feet first into the pond. The theatre did not go unnoticed as my sagely neighbour looked across with a grin bigger than the Angling Times pike catcher. 'Is my lure OK?' he called. 

Now soaking wet from head to foot, caked in mud from the waste down and thoroughly demoralised, I decided that a tactical retreat was the only dignified option left to me, so I packed away my rod, returned the borrowed lure to my grinning neighbour and carried my burden over to my bike to reload. As I approached my trusty steed, waiting patiently for me under the Silver Birch, I noticed to my horror that the previous evening's de slow-puncturing had not been quite as successful as I'd thought. My back tyre was completely flat. 

Words that a fifteen year old innocent was not theoretically supposed to have possession of streamed from my mouth, angry words, moist words, words that plunged to earth under the force of the deluge and lay drowning and unheard in the mud. I dropped my basket into the mire and slumped onto it, glaring at the Raleigh as if it was its fault and then, as a giving-me-time-to-think measure, slowly peeled off my Rovers wooly hat and squeezed a cup full of tepid water out of it.

Fifteen minutes later, I was dragging my newly pumped up load bearer across the muddy morass of the losing battle field, like a stretcher bearer on the Somme, desperately in search of terra firma and the road home. The journey was endless, the rain merciless and relentless and my entire mission fruitless. 

The pike had resisted my futile advances and retired for the day to swap stories in the snug, to reaffirm the mysteries of allure and guile. 'How do you outwit the monsters of the deep?' they quipped. 'Don't tell him pike,' they replied in unison.